Creating a personal blog seems to be some sort of rite of passage that most internet users have gone through. Keeping up with it, is yet another rite that only a very small percentage of them manage to pass. I am still trying to keep that up, and I have to admit that it is challenging to create the habit to post relevant content often.

This is where this book comes in handy – it takes you by the hand and gives awesome ideas on how to elaborate interesting content and keep up with your blog, podcasts, videos and more. Although I went through it from start to end, I’d suggest it more as a reference, since it gives so many ideas about so many different topics and you’re not always interested in all of them (you might be looking at creating just a blog, not a webinar, for example).

Thumbs up for this book, and I recommend reading if you’re looking for inspiration to go through the second rite of passage, which is to make your blog relevant and keeping up with it.

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Hey There Adriano Marques,
I take your point, I am sixteen years old. My parents are aware of my interest in forensic psychology, and they know that I’ve read “Journey Into Darkness,” an analysis of John Douglas (FBI inventor of criminal profiling)’s experience with serial killer cases. I’ve also read American Psycho. While my parents have not directly checked into the content of these two books, they know the general idea and have raised no objections. However, they still check the content in PG rated movies before letting me see them. Let me give you a few examples of their (mostly my dad’s) censorship.

They skipped the “draw me like one of your French girls” scene in Titanic because of the nudity. (Reminder that I’m a sixteen — fifteen at the time — year old GIRL).
They skipped the initial possession scene in The Exorcism of Emily Rose because Screenit.com (yes, they have a subscription) described it as looking like an “invisible rape.” Basically the scene is a girl getting thrown around her bed by an invisible force. If you know the force is a demon trying to possess her, the sexual implications are significantly lessened.
My father and I saw the PG-rated “Life of Pi” this weekend. He checked the content first.
They won’t even think about letting me watch Black Swan (they won’t even watch it themselves first, they’re that certain) because it’s “full of sex.” Granted, there is a lot of sex in there, but there’s no nudity, and I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out where my vagina is by now. (It has nothing to do with the lesbianism, btw.)
It took until this year for them to let me watch R-rated “Silent Hill,” because of the gore. They both know I am not squeamish in the slightest, and would not be affected negatively or ‘desensitized’ by gore. (I won’t go into the details with desensitization and all that, but the bottom line is that even if I’m not shocked by gore in real life due to seeing gory movies, I’m confident that I have enough perspective to intellectually react to a real-life situation. I’m not exactly going to kill anyone or suddenly become violent.)
It took until earlier this year for them to let me watch The Silence of the Lambs. Dad skipped the scene where Buffalo Bill is dancing, not because of the nudity, but because he was under the false impression that BB was wearing the woman suit at the time, which would have been ‘too creepy.’ (Let me remind you of that book about just about every kind of heinous, deranged crime possible to commit that I read.)
They skipped the tub scene in The Shining (after I had read the book), because apparently I’m too young to know what breasts look like. (16. Female. Hmm.)
They won’t let me watch “Se7en” because of the implied rape scene.
They won’t let me watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Fight Club, The Shawshank Redemption, Zodiac, The Duchess, and Red Dragon (“it’s got some mature stuff in it” — possibly referring to the killer stealing home videos of his victims, or the very non-explicit sex scene with implied oral sex. Again, let’s review the FBI book).
After months of asking, and months of my dad saying no, my mom finally convinced him to let me watch Carrie. I had to watch it alone because they were too uncomfortable watching non-sexual nudity with me.

I’m not saying that my parents are completely ridiculous people, and I appreciate that they’re trying to raise me right. I just think they’re overdoing it. By a lot. At this point in my life, I know just about everything there is to know about ‘adult content,’ and even if I don’t know something, I have enough perspective to take it in stride instead of misinterpreting it. In my state, 16 is the legal age of consent. So by my parents’ rules, I’m allowed to have sex myself, but I’m too young to see sex in a movie. Seems a little off to me. What do you think?
Kindest Regards

http://www.thoughtspad.com Adriano Marques

Hi there!

Thank you for your comment!

Now, answering to your question. First of all, I’m no specialist in this subject by no stretch of the imagination. I’m curious about some subjects outside of my education, and I tend to read a lot of different content across various heterogeneous subjects. One of them is censorship, and I see it a little different from common sense opinion. Censorship can be bad, but it can also be good. The problem is to tell what censorship is bad, and what censorship is good. The fact that government controlled media (aka censorship) is seen so badly is mostly because the concept of what is bad for the government isn’t always bad for the population. One example would be a bad press about the president, disclosing his affairs and bribes he’ve taken to make a skewed decisions towards wealthy bankers. That is bad for the government, thus subject to censorship, but important for the population to learn about and decide what to do with this president (eg: rally for his impeachment). At the other end, it could be useful for blocking content that would legitimately promote, support, and/or encourage crimes like terrorism, for example. What makes a good or bad censorship is not knowing what you don’t know. If I know, and I’m sure of the facts, that some content got censored because it contains instructions to build a dirty bomb, I call that a good censorship. I don’t need to see the instructions to build the bomb content to confirm it is bad, but I need to know that the content really is about a bad thing to agree with the censorship. That is the biggest deal with censorship, and the reason why it is got such a bad reputation. It is hard to believe if you don’t see it. There can’t be a reliable censorship mechanism in a society if there are no reliable ways to confirm the interests on which a given content was censored.

When it comes to movies, though, it gets a little different. You can always refer to sites like imdb.com and check for the parent advisory to know exactly what kind of content to expect to see in the movie, and make a decision about whether to watch it or not, based on your values and principles. Which is what I believe your parents have been doing all along, and how I presume you learned about all the scenes you mentioned.

And the it comes the real answer to your question, on whether they’re been overdoing it or not. The explanation to that, doesn’t have much to do with principles or censorship, but actually with how our brain works – it is easy to condition your brain into habits, good or bad. All it takes is some cues, repetitions, and perceived rewards to get you going into a habit (If you’d like to learn more about, refer to this book: The Power of Habit. I’ve read it already, but didn’t review it here yet. Will do that in the next few days). And the collection of those habit, will pretty much define who you are in a big or small way. For that reason, you have to be picky on what you do so that you construct as many positive habits in your life as you can, and get rid of as many negative habits as you can to be a successfully, happy, and thriving person. When it comes to violent content, for example, you may condition yourself to answer to some cues (someone offended you) with the action you’ve repeatedly seen (punch the person’s face) and be rewarded like the hero of the action movie. When I said in the post that the mainstream media injected values in our culture, that’s what I meant. When it comes to porn, same thing. And if you watch it, you’ll be conditioned to think of porn when you see some cues, and you may answer to those cues like you’ve learned from the porn contents expecting for pleasure as a reward, while at the end you are most likely to find something else other than pleasure (sexually transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancy, raising a child alone, broken family, etc.). When your parents skip those pieces of the movies, they’re trying to help you skip the suffering that this could bring to your life. Are they overdoing? Maybe now you’re better suited to answer that for yourself, than I am. If you still think otherwise, read that book and try to find some more about this subject. It is a lot more complicated than it seems, and can’t be dealt with lightly. Hope that have helped you somehow!